The clarion. [volume] (Jackson, Miss.) 1883-1888, 1887-11-16

nauhs AithS All uie valley laugh
with golden wheat and rank grass, and
catching hold the wheel of mill and fac
tory, whiris 1t with great industries.
but, breaking away from restraints and
dashing over hanks in red wrath. II
washes away harvests from their moor
ngs and makes the valleys shrink with
the catastrophe. Fire in the furnace
heats the house or drives the steamer.
out, uncontrolled, warehouses go down
In awful crash before it, and in a few
hours half city will lie In black ruin.
walls and towers and churches and
monument. You must accompany the
education of the intellect with the educa-
ton OF the heart, or you are rousing up
within your child an energy which viii
be blasting and terrific Better wicked
Ounce than a wicked philosopher.
The fourth error often committed in
the training of children is the suppress
sion of childish sportfulness. The most
triumphant death of any child that /
ever knew was that of ScoviIle HAYNES
McCollum. A few days before that. he
was at my house in Syracuse, and he ran
like deer and his halloo made the
woods echo. You could near him COM
ing block off, so full was he of romp
and laughter and whistle. Don't put re-
hgion on your child as a straight Jacket.
Parents after having for a good many
years been Jostled about in the rough
world often lose their vivacity. and are
astonished to see how their children can
act so thoughtlessly of the earnest world
all about them. That is a cruel parent
who quenches any of the light in child's
soul. Instead of arresting its sportfulness.
go forth and help him trundle the hoop,
and fiv the kite, and build the snow cas-
tie. Those shoulders are too little to
carry a burden, that brow is too young
to be wrinkled, those feet are too spright-
ly to go along at funeral pace God
bless their young heartsi Now is the
time for them to be sportful. Let them
romp and sing and laugh, and go with
rush and hurrah. In this way they
gather up surplus of energy for future
life. For the child that walks around
with scowl, dragging his feet as though
they were weights and sitting down by
the hour in moping and grumbling, l
prophesy a life of utter inanition and dis
content. Sooner hush the robins in the
air till they are silent as bat, and lect-
ure the frisking lambs ON the hillside
until they walk like old sheep, than put
exhilarant childhood in the stocks
The fifth error in the training of child
hood Is the postponement of its moral
culture until too late. Multitudes of
children because of their precocity have
been urged into depths of study where
they ought not to go, and their intellects
have been overburdened and overstrained
and battered to pieces against Latin
grammars and algebras, and coming
forth into practical life they will hardly
rise to mediocrity, and there is now a
stuffing and cramming system of educa-
ton in the schools of our country that is
deathful to the teachers who have to en-
force it, and destructive to the children
who must submit to the process. You
find children at 8 and 10 years of age
with school lessons only appropriate for
children of 10. If children are kept in
school and studying from to O'Clock,
| no home study except music ought to be
required of them. Six hours of study is
enough for any child. The rest of the
| day ought to be devoted to recreation
and pure fun. But you cannot begin
| too early the moral culture of a child, or
| on too complete a scale. You can look
| back upon your own life and remember
| what mighty impressions were made
upon you at 5 or years of age. Oh,
| that child does not sit so silent during
| your conversation to be uninfiuenced by
| it. You say he does not understand. AL
though much of your phraseology is be-
yond his grasp, he is gathering up from
| your talk influences which will affect his
immortal destiny. From the question he
| asks you long afterward you find he
understood all about what you were say
ing. You think the child does not ap-
preciate that beautiful cloud, but its most
delicate lines are reflected into the very
| denths of the ynilthful NATURE, and a
score of years from now Won will see the
snadow On uIIaJ
refnements developed. The song with
which you sang that child to sleep will
echo through all its life, and ring back
from the very arches of heaven. think
that often the first seven years of a
child's life decides whether it shall be
irascible, waspish, rude, false, hypocrit-
ical, or gentle, truthful, frank, obedient,
honest and Christian. The present gen.
erations of men will pass off very much
as they are now. Although the Cos
pei is offered them, the general rule is
that drunkards die drunkards, thieves
die thieves, hbertines die libertines.
Therefore to the youth we turn. Before
they SOW wild oats get them to sow
wheat and barley. You fill the bushel
measure with good corn, and there will
be no room for husks. Glorious Alfred
| Cookman was converted at 10 years of
age. AT Carlisle, Pa, during the pro-
| gress of a religious meeting in the Metho-
dist church, while many were kneeling
| at the foot of the altar, this boy knelt in
corner of the church all by himself and
| said: Precious Saviour, thou art saw
| ing others, 0, wilt thou not save me?'
| A Presbyterian elder knelt beside him
| and led him into the light. Enthroned
| Alfred Cookman! Tell me from the
| skies, were you converted too early? But
| / cannot hear his answer. 1t is over
| powered by the huzZas of the tens of
| thousands who were brought to God
| through his ministry. Isaac Watts, the
| great Christian poet, was converted at 8
| years of age. Robert Hall, the great
| Baptist evangelist, was converted at IL
| years of age. Jonathan Edwards, the
| greatest of American logicians, was con-
verted at years of age.
Oh for one generation of holy men and
| women. Shall it be the next? Fathers
4
| eide whether from your families shall go
forth towards. inebriates, counterfeiters,
blasphemers, and whether there shall be
those bearing your image and carrying
| your name fostering in the low haunts of
vice, and fioundering in dissipation, and
| making the midnight of their lives horrid
with long howl of ruin, or whether
| from your family altars shall come the
4 l,a ofO tho tkaoI,oy-
| the ministers of Christ, the comforters of
| the troubled, the healers of the sick, the
| enacters of good laws, the founders of
| charitable institutions, and a great many
| who shall in the humber spheres of toll
and usefulness serve god and the best in
terests of the human race.
You cannot as parents shirk the re-
sponsibility. God has charged you with
| a mission, and all the thrones of heaven
are waiting to see whether you viii dc
your duty. We must not forget that il
| is not so much what we teach our chill
dren as what we are in their presence.
| We wish them to be better than we are,
but the probability is that they viii only
be reproductions of our own character.
German literature has much TO say OF
the ssspecter of Brocken." Among those
mountains travellers in certain conditions
of the atmosphere see themselves copied
on a gigantic scale in the clouds. Al
first the travellers do not realize that it Is
themselves on larger scale. When they
lift a hand or move the head this monster
specter does the same, and with such
enlargement of proportions that the scene
is most exciting, and thousands have gone
to that place just to behold the specter
of Broken. The probability is that some
of our faults which we consider small
and insignificant, if we do not put an end
to them will be copied on larger scale